PARTIS-Artistic Practices for Social Inclusion
PARTIS, which ran for the second time in 2015, is a programme that allows the Gulbenkian Foundation to realize its conviction that art is an agent for inclusion and social change through its unique power to bring people together. It has been designed to support projects that use artistic practices (music, photography, video, theatre, dance and circus arts) as tools to create bridges between communities that normally do not cross paths.
It's a program promoted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation that believes that art is the engine for the inclusion and social change, with its unique power to unite people. It was designed to support projects that use artistic practices - music, photography, video, theater, dance and circus - as tools to create bridges between communities that usually do not cross.
It’s an application Funding Program, that allows the access to all organizations to apply. The program do not open exclusively to social or artistic agents. The program privileged the principle of democratization, to access to the finance. For example, there are projects promoted by entities with an exclusively social or artistic basis, but we can also find some hybrids organizations that have the both dimensions on its mission. This program funds the project but can also fund the structure of the organization in order to create a more sustainable basis for the intervention (eg. Refugiacto group - from Portuguese Refugee Council).
PARTIS gives finantial support to two projects developed by the Portuguese Refugee Council:
1."Refuge and Theatre: sleep thousand gestures on my fingers" (CPR/PARTIS)
It's a project, promoted by the Portuguese Refugee Council, funded by Partis Program (Artistic Practices for Social Inclusion), of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, to associate the theater to language learning. The main objective of the project is to create a set of activities related to the theater, while enhancing the integration and social inclusion, mediator of personal and interpersonal conflicts, while supporting the learning and practice of Portuguese language and culture. It's also the link between the arts and life, unifier of cultures, knowledge and feelings, and finally the theater as an opportunity to share with the society in general the situation of refugees in the world and each of the refugee-performers have a voice that is all they have to shut up. Activities developed:
a) - Dramatic Expression sessions for asylum seekers accommodated in a Reception Centre for Refugees (Bobadela), using the theater as a base activity of the integration process, together with the Portuguese language);
b) - Organize and promote all the work of the RefugiActo, composed by refugees and non-refugees, with their own artistic objectives and intervention in society.
2. Refuge and Art: Sleeps thousand colors on my fingers
It's a project promoted by the Portuguese Council for Refugees, co-financed by the PARTIS Program (Artistic Practices for Social Inclusion), of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The main objective of this project is to develop a project related to the plastic arts, directed to young refugees and asylum seekers, in order to create tools that promotes the learning of the language and the inclusion in the Portuguese society. This project establishes partnerships with educational institutions, artists' studios, exhibition halls and galleries. Schools have a central role, embodied in the joint celebration of artistic expression initiatives and significant dates.
Where the second edition is concerned (2015), 160 applications were received from all over the country and 16 new projects were selected to receive support over the three-year period between 2016 and 2018.
The projects that made up the first edition, some of which are still underway, completed their second year of existence, having given rise to 7963 activities and 321 public events (37,636 visitors/public) and reaching around 5791 direct participants. These projects involve 181 full-time professionals, 104 volunteers and 287 (public and private, profit and non-profit) partner organisations.
There is concern about the process and not just with the product. The priority of PARTIS projects is the process of growth and autonomy of the people involved. The idea is in fact not make public presentation the culmination of the process, but a part of it, so that the work does not end there but remains, making more sustained the changing process. The public presentations are always previously assessed to see if they have artistic quality to do so.
1ª edition 2014-2016 - Funded - 17 projects
2ª edition 2016-2018 - Funded - 16 projects
The project represents an investment of around €1 million over a period of three years.
From 2014-2016, the Partis Programme Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation supports through PARTIS 15,000 €/year the following activities: Dramatic Expression sessions for asylum seekers and organize and promote all the work of the RefugiActo, composed by refugees and non-refugees, with their own artistic objectives and intervention in society.
Refuge and Art: Sleeps thousand colors on my fingers is a project financed also by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (15.000€/year).
The evaluation methodology is being developed at the same time that the program is being implemented (ongoing evaluation). However they want to make a social and artistic evaluation. For this purpose, they are drawing with an evaluative expert in Arts from UK an artistic evaluation model to evaluate the artistic quality of the projects.
For the Program is important to evaluate the social inclusion process as well as the ability of the project for an artistic public presentation. The products that results from the intervention are very important but the emphasis is on the social and artistic process. In what concerns to the artistic evaluation it will be a more qualitative assessment.
Base in the experience of the first edition, in the second edition of the PARTIS was made an initial training about evaluation, specially dedicated to the Theory of Change, in order to define exactly what is expected for each project and which are their goals, so they could not be changed during the implementation process. This training was held for a day with the promoter and partner of each project. In this training were defined the goals of each project, their target groups and how they were standing at the moment.